THE IDIOTIC IDEA OF TRUMP AS BULLY
EITHER Democrats and the national media know they’re being melodramatic when they call Donald Trump a “bully” or they have no clue what bullying actually looks like. After last week’s debate, liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof described the Republican nominee as “the seventhgrade bully.” The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson said Trump has a “bully’s instinct for his opponent’s weakness” but that it had failed against Hillary Clinton in the debate.
Because Trump interjected several times while his Democratic opponent was speaking, Mark Oppenheimer at the Los Angeles Times said his microphone should’ve been cut off when it wasn’t his turn to speak. Having Trump’s mic on when it wasn’t his turn “empower [ed] a bully, especially a male bully,” wrote Oppenheimer.
Anyone who hadn’t seen the debate but read the media’s coverage of it would be forgiven for assuming Trump had given Clinton a wedgie and broken her glasses on live TV. Please. Trump sometimes interrupted Clinton, made facial expressions when she talked and ridiculed her as a “typical politician: all talk, no action.” In other words, he debated her. But the left’s “bully” meme isn’t new. At the Democratic convention in July, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said it was “time to put a bully in his place, and a tough woman in hers — the White House!”
Late last year, the Washington Post editorial board drew a parallel between Trump and Communist-hunter Joe McCarthy. “We have seen the likes of him before,” said the Post, “in the United States and elsewhere: narcissistic bullies who rise to prominence by spreading lies, appealing to fears and stoking hatred.”
Also last year, WaPo columnist Dana Milbank advised the other GOP presidential hopefuls to treat Trump as “the schoolyard bully he has been acting like.”
Among Trump’s sins throughout the primary were to call Jeb Bush “low energy,” Ted Cruz “Lyin’” and Marco Rubio “little.”
They were the comic book villain-style taunts that reminded normal people of Batman and the Joker.
But the media and Democrats feigned dark flashbacks to the oversized middle-schooler dunking their heads in the toilet.
The federal government defines bullying as “unwanted, aggressive behavior . . . that involves a real or perceived power imbalance.”
Trump has a penchant for insults and a knack for getting his supporters to laugh at his opponents. But what about the “power imbalance”?
He’s a longtime businessman and TV celebrity with no real power other than his popularity with roughly half the country’s voters. Meanwhile, his targets have all the power of the Washington political establishment, the airwaves and the national newspapers.
Clinton is the wife of a former president, she’s been a senator and a secretary of state. There’s no imbalance of power between her and a man who sold now-defunct brands of bottled water and steaks.
Bush is the brother and son of two presidents, a former governor and associate to big Wall Street banks. There’s no imbalance of power between him and a man who once fired Gary Busey on a TV game show.
There’s a difference between being ridiculed and being bullied.
Real victims of bullying are physically harmed, emotionally paralyzed and worse. When Clinton is “bullied,” she solicits donations to help get her into the White House.
In August, Clinton sent out an e-mail to Democrats “to address the idea that Donald Trump is anything other than the rockthrowing bully he’s proven himself to be since day one of his candidacy.” At the end, it asked for money. Clinton loyalist James Carville sent a similar e-mail in June, calling on supporters “to pony up and chip in — we can’t let that unreconstructed bully get near the White House.”
The same month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent an e-mail calling Trump “a small, insecure, money grubbing bully.” That one asked for money, too. When Democrats and the media call Trump a “bully,” what they’re telling voters is: Stop laughing at us. And send us a check.
Clinton is a former first lady, senator and secretary of state.